Manifesto for suburban living
Transforming suburban consumption hubs into productive circular ecosystems
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Instructors:
Academic Harvard GSD (Collab with Jinho Shin)
Core Studio 2 Elements of Urban Design
Oct’25 - Dec ‘25
Westwood, Massachussets
Urban Research and mapping, Urban Design
Dana McKinney White, Stephen Gray, Alex Yuen, Peter Rowe, Rahul Mehrotra, Michael Manfredi, Maurice Cox
American suburbia, sold as living in nature away from urban congestion, has produced interrelated crises: excessive land consumption destroying natural systems, spatial segregation fragmenting community life, dispersed extraction-based development, and car dependency. In Westwood, lawns and asphalt overwrite forests and watersheds, while isolated programs of homes, retail, warehouses create fragmented experiences connected only by automobiles. This proposal reimagines suburbia as a regenerative system that reconnects ecologies, programs, and people through circular food, material, energy, and water flows.
Systems diagram loop
The food cluster combines greenhouses, culinary education, market halls, and orchards within integrated food-water-energy systems where the reclaimed rail corridor becomes walkable productive edge in dry seasons and resilient wetland during monsoons. The proposal transforms Westwood into landscape-led urbanism where ecological flows, clustered densities, and circular economies form integrated framework, offering a model for how suburban territories can evolve through ecological systems rather than conventional development.
The strategy identifies transformation opportunities within existing big-box infrastructures like Wegmans and Home Center, reprogramming consumption hubs as productive nodes. Food clusters embed community gardens, greenhouses, market halls, and compost stations establishing neighborhood-scale loops. Material hubs transform into regeneration workshops integrating repair cafés, reclamation yards, and fabrication labs where waste becomes resource. Water collection through retention ponds, reed beds, and phytoremediation creates circular systems reducing extraction and regenerating ecosystems.
